In my new quest for campus novels to fill the void left in my heart from being away from college, I picked up Alexander Maksik’s You Deserve Nothing. In truth, I found it on a list of books similar to The Marriage Plot, which I last wrote about. In reality, it is nothing like The Marriage Plot.

The book is centered around three characters who share their perspectives in different chapters (the only part, really, similar to The Marriage Plot). Will is a 38-year-old English teacher at the International School of Paris, and Marie and Gilad are two of his students. This year, Will is teaching a senior seminar on existentialism, and it is those questions, about the existence of meaning in life or lack thereof, that also drive this novel. Thus, many of the class discussions that readers are privy to are also questions one might have after finishing You Deserve Nothing. The book begins simply—Will begins an affair with Marie. It is almost cliché—young, single English teacher, beautiful young woman, all set in the backdrop of the glittering city of Paris. I was almost disappointed after the first few chapters.

However, it becomes clear as one goes on that Maksik is less interested in the affair and more interested in existentialism. The class begins to read The Stranger by Albert Camus (one of my favorite novels!), and it becomes clear that that novel is a big influence on this one. In fact, Will and Gilad witness a random, cold-blooded murder on the Metro that is incredibly similar to one that Meursault witnesses in The Stranger.

Will, throughout the novel, never feels any guilt about the affair. This is interesting, because while we, as readers, might question the morality of it based on our own values, the focus of the novel is not on whether or not he did something wrong, but whether or not it does or should matter. This was very interesting to me, and aligns quite well with my personal, liberal philosophy about love and sex. Given this, as well as the focus on literature that I love, set in a city that I have always been fascinated with, You Deserve Nothing seemed like a book that I should love.

However, there was something lacking. I think that perhaps I do not find Maksik to be a particularly great writer. He tells a pretty common story in a style of writing that feels as though it has not yet matured. The characters’ perspectives all seem surface level, particularly Will’s. They do not contain a deeper level of thinking that, though might be extraneous from the immediate plot, might flesh out the characters into real human beings. This might be ok for Gilad and Marie, who are still teenagers and are not fully formed human beings, but for Will, it makes him seem particularly one dimensional and dull. I think it is difficult to ask a reader to read about a man who is engaged in questionable acts if he himself is not a dynamic character and thus becomes defined by those acts, not by his personality. The only reason that I was able to understand Will, or the concept behind his character, was because I had read The Stranger, and understood that he was something of a Meursault figure.

Certainly, You Deserve Nothing is an interesting read. Unfortunately, I think it is not much more. It falls short of the larger questions about existence it is trying to initiate. Furthermore, I’m not sure those questions are anything unique. I left the book thinking I could have been posed those same questions in a more interesting form had I been reading Camus or Sartre.

It is an age-old writers’ problem—wanting to write like your own literary idols, taking inspiration from them. Sometimes, combining this with ones’ own original style and ideas can make something unique. Unfortunately, Maksik didn’t have much of either.

You Deserve Nothing
Author: Alexander Maksik
Publisher: Europa Editions
Publication Date: August 2011

Contributor: Sarisha Kurup attends Bowdoin College in Maine.